Leaked roadmap raises questions about Office 15, Windows 8 launch

A leaked product roadmap says that Office 15 may not ship until 2013. This in turn has implications for the release of Windows 8, as ARM tablets sporting the operating system will have Office 15 apps pre-installed.

Pure conjecture, but perhaps MS is counting on the restricted environment of WOA to allow an early release on that platform. At the very least 3rd party plugins won't work on WOA (correct?), so no need to worry about compatabilities there.

Maybe Microsoft have finally taken the criticism to heart and are giving themselves some extra time to polish the desktop/laptop user experience.

It's not as bad as Vista - the problems with that OS were deeply rooted architectural/functional ones that took two service packs to (mostly) fix. Windows 8 is nearly perfect from that point of view. The user interface problems can easily be fixed even this late in the development cycle.

There are a few points to keep in mind about Windows 8. One is that there is surely a large amount of conflict within Microsoft about the state of the effort and the appropriate way to deal with it. One can imagine reasons why Steve Ballmer might want to leak rumors about Windows 8. But, if Microsoft was really ready to reveal its schedule, there is no reason why they simply could not tell us what it is. So, one has to suspect some kind of private agenda every time leaks appear. Another is that almost certainly nobody in Microsoft knows for sure what a realistic schedule for delivering Windows 8 is. Windows 8 is still a large collection of pieces being worked on by a large collection of development teams. Each of those teams is likely to be in some uncertainty about the state of their own piece of work and mostly in the dark about everyone else's. Management has no way to evaluate the state of the project besides looking at test results. If those results had already reached the bar that would demonstrate a completed Windows 8 at an acceptable quality level, we would all know about it. Until that bar is hit, management has no realistic way to know how long it is going to take to get there.

The fact that the full Office 15 won't be fully released until early 2013 doesn't necessarily contradict the possibility that Windows on ARM will ship with "Office".

Why?

Because Microsoft Office is a suite of 15 or so applications that are bundled in various ways, but Office on WOA will likely only include three or so of these.

It all comes down to a matter of testing. All the Office applications interwork, so there is a lot of cross-application testing that needs to take place before the full-blown "Office" is released. But the testing for three or so main ones takes a lot less.

The fact that the full Office 15 won't be fully released until early 2012 doesn't necessarily contradict the possibility that Windows on ARM will ship with "Office".

Why?

Because Microsoft Office is a suite of 15 or so applications that are bundled in various ways, but Office on WOA will likely only include three or so of these.

It all comes down to a matter of testing. All the Office applications interwork, so there is a lot of cross-application testing that needs to take place before the full-blown "Office" is released. But the testing for three three or so main ones takes a lot less.

I came here to post this. Microsoft already has a version of Office for ARM, it's running on WP7 right now. It's not a huge leap to believe that it's just an expanded version of this rather than the full Office 15 experience, especially since they're giving away Office for free on ARM devices and selling the desktop version for a huge chunk of change.

I know several people in Office Development and they say that literally they will not know until just days before gold that they are going "gold". The one. personal I know in OS dev says they only know from the "decision" makers a few weeks before gold, so I suspect noone outside of management knows except in the most general ways

Everything they do is incredibly slow, and fraught with delay after delay that messes up all their announcements so that they never make their deadlines and can't manage to make their announcements accurate even while backtracking on how long it's all going to take.

These are signs of profound structural/organizational/hierarchical problems both within the company and within the software. And it's only getting worse. As the company loses its structural coherence, so do the products, and vice versa in an entropic feedback loop that gets faster and faster as the releases get slower and slower.

Pure conjecture, but perhaps MS is counting on the restricted environment of WOA to allow an early release on that platform. At the very least 3rd party plugins won't work on WOA (correct?), so no need to worry about compatabilities there.

I thought that I heard about a new plug-in environment based on web languages. An obvious direction, so they're probably farther along on the development. But still, brand new and worthy of testing. I presume VBA is MIA, as it is on Mac iirc.

This is exactly the reason that I don't like pre-release announcements, rumours or company-sponsored. Lots of hype and exaggeration and eventually the final product does not live up to the expected timeframe or features. I'm getting really sick of vapourware.

Apart from what dnjake and dlux said, the roadmap refers to Windows Phone Mango as 'v. Next', common Microsoft slang for the upcoming version. Basically, even if it was actually a Microsoft roadmap, this roadmap was made in late 2010 (mid-2011 at the latest), and should be taken with a grain of salt - the roadmap has likely changed since then.

Delaying office 15 would not be a problem. However delaying windows 8 until next year would be catastrophic. If Microsoft is going to have any chance at all to compete with the iPad they must get windows 8 out this year. And I believe they will.

Delaying office 15 would not be a problem. However delaying windows 8 until next year would be catastrophic. If Microsoft is going to have any chance at all to compete with the iPad they must get windows 8 out this year. And I believe they will.

Absolutely 100% correct, until your final sentence. Why believe that? It's not like they've got any track record for making deadlines (unlike, say, Apple, who've gotten so fast and efficient that they actually bring stuff out way ahead of projections, like Mountain Lion).

There's a lot of this thinking going around, though. Whenever I see a photograph of Steve Ballmer (for example, when he was shaking hands with the Nokia guys over that deal), he's got this incredibly fierce glare in his eyes, because he's so determined (because he knows how important, how "do or die" it is for the company), which means that, damn it, through force of will, they will succeed, like Rocky Balboa. It's pure sales-guy thinking: We must succeed, so we will. Movie-hero stuff. Unfortunately it doesn't translate at all from sports or fiction into the realm of technology, engineering and design.

Delaying Office 15 is not such a great idea either as Office is the cash cow of the firm. Major businesses buy Office because they have to. Not every business are on Windows 7 and many are sit on XP because it still runs on the latest business apps.

Not many businesses are interested in deploying Windows 8 and most will be trying to update to Windows 7 soon.

Windows 8 will be a huge gamble that may not pay off. Office 2015 will be a sure profit as businesses always adopt the latest Office formats within 2 years.

I came here to post this. Microsoft already has a version of Office for ARM, it's running on WP7 right now. It's not a huge leap to believe that it's just an expanded version of this rather than the full Office 15 experience, especially since they're giving away Office for free on ARM devices and selling the desktop version for a huge chunk of change.

It will offer full compatibility with Office documents, which the Windows Phone 7 apps cannot do.

And if Windows on ARM isn't ready until 2013, that in turn implies that the essentially identical Windows for Intel-compatible systems won't be ready until 2013 either.

Implies, perhaps. But what of the possibility that W8/Intel ships in 2012, while W8/ARM ships in 2013?

That's not a completely unreasonable compromise.

I think if Windows on ARM does not ship until 2013 it will be DOA.

Windows on ARM is already a tenuous proposition. You lose the ability to run existing x86 code (so even if the machine is, for example, docked with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, you still can't run legacy desktop apps). The "advantage" of ARM is slightly cheaper systems with slightly longer battery life and slightly lower weight, but that advantage is only relative to the full-power, high-end x86 processors (Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, etc.). Intel Clover Trail tablets will offer comparable battery life, weight, and affordability, arguably better performance, and full backwards compatibility for those who want it.

If all goes well, Clover Trail machines will be available as soon as the regular x86/x64 version of Windows 8 is released. If that happens, why on earth would anyone bother with Windows on ARM?

The only mitigating factor, if it really comes down to it, is that if Windows 8/Intel ships in late 2012, everyone will be occupied with a significant new Windows release, regardless of what architecture it runs on. There will be plenty of press coverage and reviews and support issues and business strategy wranglings to keep everyone busy for a few months. After all that dies down, Microsoft releases WoA as a separate event in 2013, by which time they can temper expectations and get in more Q/A time.

The one hard deadline they absolutely must make is to release it well ahead of the iPad 4 (2013) build-up, whenever that gets going.

Edit:

DrPizza wrote:

If all goes well, Clover Trail machines will be available as soon as the regular x86/x64 version of Windows 8 is released. If that happens, why on earth would anyone bother with Windows on ARM?

I agree with that, although Intel doesn't always hit their deadlines. And if they didn't, Microsoft would probably be the first to know outside of Intel. Whether that's an explanation for the leaked screenshots or not is up for speculation.

I thought MS had an overriding directive to "ship it now, we'll patch it later." They were the ones that invented the "ship it" award, after all.

I hope they have changed their tune. Since MS now has enough competitors, since they're seeing their precious desktop market being replaced with portable computing and console options, since folks over the last 20 years became disenfranchised with MS resting on their laurels ... maybe MS realizes they finally have to step up their game.

They did ok with IE 9. Win 7 was pretty good. Don't drop your ball now. It was easy to shrug off fumbles in the past (WinME, Vista), but you've got sharks looking for blood now.

I thought MS had an overriding directive to "ship it now, we'll patch it later." They were the ones that invented the "ship it" award, after all.

I hope they have changed their tune. Since MS now has enough competitors, since they're seeing their precious desktop market being replaced with portable computing and console options, since folks over the last 20 years became disenfranchised with MS resting on their laurels ... maybe MS realizes they finally have to step up their game.

They did ok with IE 9. Win 7 was pretty good. Don't drop your ball now. It was easy to shrug off fumbles in the past (WinME, Vista), but you've got sharks looking for blood now.

They haven't done "ship it now" in a long time. If you look at post-Vista releases (which, by the way, engendered a massive internal restructuring in how development happened in MS), they've done a pretty good string of solid software. It's not always as feature-rich as people want (WP7), but it's stable and polished. MS largely gets it now.